June 14, 2012 • 36 mins
The Horror: Why do we enjoy scary movies or a stroll through a haunted house? How is our response colored by our genes, evolution and culture? In this episode, Julie and Robert take a close look at what scares us and why we're so addicted to terror. Image: Doug Gray/© Illustration Works/Corbis
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what is your relationship with horror stories, with horror movies,
with horror fiction. Um, well, you're a fan. Well, well, yeah,
(00:24):
I would say that I'm not as much anymore. And
I became really sensitive to horror in any sort of
form um when my after my daughter was born. Actually
well I was pregnant, so I have been slowly ramping
back up, back back up into zombie land. Uh. But
I used to love the Ripper stuff. I'm not a ripperologist,
(00:47):
but that that was something that occupied my mind for
for many, many years and a ripper enthusiast enthusiast. Sure, sure,
I like that. Um but yeah, yeah, that's that's uh
stuff that I think is absolutely frightening and takes hold
of your mind and you can't help being transport. And
I'm pretty sure that you have a good and lengthy
(01:08):
relationship with horror. Yeah yeah, I um, I mean from
very early on, possibly because my my my mom's explanation
for this is that she is that they always made
too much out of Halloween, or that they really celebrated
Halloween in our households. So it kind of instilled an
early fascination with with them a cob and and and
(01:30):
perhaps that that's the case, but I mean from a
very early age, I was fascinated with with these fantastic
stories and settings and and any kind of creepy tales. UM.
I remember like when I was in uh younger grades,
we would would go to the video store to rent
movies as a family, or I'd go there with my dad,
(01:51):
and we were not horror movie renting people, but I
would sneak over or even not really sneak, but I would.
I would go over to the horror and I would
walk down I would look at all the vhs uh
covers And it was a pretty uh, pretty crazy experience
doing that because on one hand, especially in you know,
back in the back in the nineties, these uh, these
(02:13):
VHS covers, they even the crappiest film might have a
really awesome bit of poster art on the cover, awesome title,
really awesome stelf and uh. And as we've discussed before,
I think that like the first episode we did with
each other, or the second about people turning inside out.
There was one film that had a picture of a
guy turning inside out on the cover, and the actual
(02:34):
film has nothing to do with that. And it didn't
you say, he had like jeans onto you, And that
was what was so just concerting, as he was turning
himself inside out or he was inside out, and yet
he had jeans on like me. Maybe he knew he
was going to turn inside out and he has a
real version of nudity, so he swallowed some gene shorts
before the poisonous miss could transform him. How that happened.
But they always had, you know, even if it was
(02:55):
it was something just crazy, out of the ordinary, just
a lost beef home, it might have some really neat
cover going on. And then the mainstream hits, they all
had fascinating covers, be it like a Friday the thirteen
or a Nightmare on Elm Street. And and I would
always build up in my mind this, uh, this creative
version of what that film must consist of, and generally,
(03:17):
you know, it's it's not an idea that would stand
the test of time when I actually watched the film
later on the road. So yeah, from a from a
very early point, I was very interested in these in
horror stories and some of the first books I started
reading a really hardcore where Stephen King books, and then
we got really into love craft, and and I still
(03:37):
I still read a certain amount of horror. Some of
it maybe is a little more literary, some of it
is significantly less literary, depending on I guess what my
mood is, and I write stories that are horror or
horror esque in nature. So right, we'll get to the
crux of what we're talking about in a moment. But
(03:57):
you want to talk about as soon as I'm through rampling, No, no, no,
about what you've written and in some upcoming information about that. Oh,
I do have a book of short stories. It's going
to be out eventually, but I don't it's a book
of Southern short stories and it's called it's going to
be called The Grave Stoppers, I believe. Yeah. Okay, so
look forward to and we'll give you, guess some more
(04:19):
information on that. But I think that's really exciting to
talk about. I'm excited about it. It's just got a
little more editing tweaking to do. Um. But yeah, the
the topic here, we're talking about horror. We're talking about
our fascination with horror and kids fascination kids, because that's
the thing, Like, like I mentioned earlier, from a very
early age, I was interested in what these stories consisted of,
(04:41):
even if they were forbidden to me, and you know,
probably in certain to a certain extent because they were
forbidden to me. But but all kids seem to have
this this obsession on some level with with what is
waiting in the closet right what is behind the shower
curtain or looking at in the bottom of the toilet,
you know. And and and that is so true because um,
(05:03):
I remember just hating these stories when I was a
little but loving them the same time, like tell me again,
and tell me again, and then just you know, sitting
in my bed thinking about how a severed hand was
going to come and strangle me to death. They're talking
about the toilet story. Oh they did think made me
think about the toilet first for a moment, because I
kind of think at some point I thought a severed
hand might come out of the toilet too. When I
(05:23):
was a little I'll see, I was poisoned by the
VHS covers because they had these awful doolies films and
that it pictured that the cover arts are are amazing
because they picture these really bad looking puppets. Not these
were not hints and creations, but like horrible little goblin
puppets coming out of the toilet. And the idea, I
think the tagline was like they get you in the
end or something, because you're exposed, you're vulnerable on the
(05:46):
toilet and as a kid, there there are other anxieties
tied up with with using the toilet anyway. And then
throw in the fact that there might be a goblin
down there that might eat you in the bomb that
in the that's that's problem out right there. Well, let's
talk a little bit about clowns for a moment um,
because you know what you're talking about, toilets and scary stuff.
(06:09):
You've gotta go to clowns. Um, I'm not the only
person who's frightened of clowns. Apparently this is something that
a lot of people have a phobia of. And there
is one study that I thought was very interesting. Um.
The University of Sheffield study asked more than two fifty
children ages four to sixteen, what they thought of the
idea of using clown imagery to decorate a hospital children's ward.
(06:31):
Because this is really they were trying to figure out
what they wanted to make this ward look like to
make the kids feel more at home. According to Dr
Penny Curtis, who helped conduct the study, quote, we found
that clowns were universally disliked by children. Some found them
quite frightening and unknowable. And unknowable I thought that was
(06:52):
a really interesting word choice because I thought that I
think is part of the problem with clowns. Um. And
think anybody who's listening that has same feeling about clowns
that I do. There's this idea that you know, there's
some someone hiding behind a mask, not showing their true
self well, and their skin is ghostly pale, and then
grease paint. It's just and they're doing you know, creepy tricks. Um.
(07:16):
But sometimes they're saving rodeo people from certain goring at
the hands of a bull. You gotta respect the rodeo clowns.
I don't know. I don't know about I think the
rodeo clown has perhaps be most frightening because then you
just put a cowboy head on top. It's just it
doesn't work well. One way. I see this tying and
what we're talking about today. The rodeo clown especially is
(07:37):
kind of distracting you from the idea of death. And
maybe we sort of see that, see through that to
a certain extent, you know, and we kind of we
can't we see the con going on and we don't
want to buy into it. That's not a clown having fun.
That is one dude trying to save another guy from
getting run through with bullhorns. I don't know about that.
I think that is the clown trying to add more
(07:57):
distraction so that the the radio person will be gored
to death. Because I mean, I do not see anything
there that's that's um, that is genuine, that's that's beneficial. Well,
we'll tell me. There's one more thing about clowns here. Um.
And I encountered the clown phobia a lot because it
seems like everybody has it. Um. But I started with
(08:19):
jesters for me, by the way, jester for the record, no,
just court jesters. Those guys, well there with court jesters,
I feel like they're a little more honest because the
court jester is obviously adult and his and his and
is also in such close proximity to a mad ruler.
They're really hanging on by a thread. They have to
walk that line every day. Um? And can I make
(08:41):
the king laugh without actually uh winding up in the dungeon?
You know? So I feel for those guys along, But
but tell me this, how about the sad clowns? How
about the sad hobo clowns? Like like, mkelly, are you kidding?
Like that's that's that's the worst? How is that the worst?
Was just even you see him and he's just the
hobo clown, you know, with stubble on the chimp, a
(09:04):
cigarette hanging out, you know, two coins in his pocket,
has a hole in it. That's uplifting for a child
right there there hoping it has that hobo mystique about him.
You know, it's the traveler, he's got emperiences. Um okay.
So I think the question is why do we keep
going to material that that unearth these uneasy feelings? So
(09:26):
why did I read Stephen King's it? And I couldn't
put it down? Um? You know, and and it features
a prominent clown, right. I think there's people when they
think about clowns, they usually think kings. Ye, why do
we keep doing this? And scientists believe that The answer
is that humans have evolved to actually enjoy fear, and
that we there's a type of personality that really enjoys it.
(09:49):
We've talked about this person before. It's the neophiliac. It's
like the type T right, Type T. Yeah, this is
the person who craves new experiences, really wants a jolt,
and that's because they have a lot more dopamine flowing
and we already know that they are genetic markers for this, right. Um,
So this is something that is hardwired in some people.
But that being said, even if you're not a type
(10:11):
TIE person or a neophiliac, usually most people enjoy good
scare to some degree. So should I walk us through
the the the the shadow of the value of death.
Al Right, So let's say you're watching something scary or
or reading something scary. Um, I don't know. Let's say
it's our textis Chainsaw Masker. That's that was one that
(10:33):
always got on. Um. So you're watching this right, Yeah,
the horror on the screen and uh and in the
soundtrack because it has a fabulous sound design. Uh, runs
into your ears, into your eyes, and it all winds
up in this little almond shaped clump of neurons called
the amygdala. All right, right, we've talked about the Magdola
processes all sorts of emotions front and center. Yeah, it's
(10:57):
vital to emotional processing, especially thanks like glove, pleasure, and
of course fear um. So Amigola activate unless she's all this,
All these brain and body cocktails into your body, All
these hormones, all right, yeah, Yeah, prompts the adrenal glands
to turn out cortisol, which is a stress hormone, and
(11:18):
high levels of this can actually impede insulin and causes
the rise in blood sugar. Gives you a little extra
fuel because you the brain is telling you something scary
is happening and you might have to either run from
it or attack it with a stick. So yeah, you
can need extra oxygen for that. So you're breathing faster.
The body is saying, all right, let's do it. We're
gonna fight or flight. I'm going to make sure that
(11:40):
you have enough oxygen for it. Heart is racing so
that oxygen can get to your muscles. Your appetite stalls,
because if you're about to have to fight leather face,
you don't you don't want to have to stop for
a snack break or granola bar bar halfway through it um,
which I think would be a nice take because you know,
in the slasher films, what always happens to the the
survey of her lady, right, she ends up knocking down
(12:02):
Jason Vorhees or somehow incapacitating our killer, kicking him in
the the nethers or something hitting him on the head,
and then they're down. And instead of doing the logical thing,
which is either which is fight or flight, which is
either run all the way away into the next county
or never stop hitting the down maniac in the face
(12:22):
with a brick fight it finish it right, Instead, they
set there next to the the killer and maybe weep
a little bit until they actually wait back up again
and it all starts a new But it would be
a nice twist if if they stopped and they actually
use that time to have a granilla bar and yeah,
little sacket of snack mix. That would be you know,
if anybody's listening in there, they're writing the next screenplay
for screen ten or whatever we're on though. All right,
(12:45):
so but that's not all Your appetite is stalled, and
you're also you're sweating because we don't want you to
overheat in this fight or flight scenario, all right, your
pupils are dilated so that you can see the enemy better,
because again the body is getting you ready to either
fight it or flight it. And uh. And finally, the
cortisol saturated your bloodstream and feeds back in the nicola
(13:06):
to boost the perception of danger. So it also reinforces
your memory of that initial fright so that you'll still
feel a little jumpy. Because the idea here is like
I got attacked by Jason Vorhees today, I might be
attacked by another Jason Vorhees tomorrow. So it stays in
your system for a few days. That's why something frightful happens,
you're you maybe a little jumpy for a little bit afterwards,
(13:26):
for you know, days. And this all happens within about
three seconds. And while all this is happening, information also
travels to your prefrontal cortex, and this is part of
the brain responsible for consciously evaluating danger and it tells you,
thankfully that this is just a movie. And so what
happens is you are completely overstimulated, right, and the resulting
(13:50):
spillover is processed as reward instead of fear because all
of a sudden you think, oh, yes, okay, it's okay,
there's there's no imminent threat. I have actually served vibed
what I just imagined for myself. Yeah, because the other thing,
if you're about to potentially fight Jason Vorhees or run
from him, um, the body is also helping out by
making sure that the that their endorphins released into your
(14:13):
bloodstream because you're going to sustain injuries if you're fighting
him or running through the woods to escape him. So
so you end up having dopamine, uh flowing through the
system is feel good drug that if you're not actually
having to fight or run away, is just going to
be there to make you feel good, you know. And
you mentioned to you that cortisol lingers in your blood
(14:34):
for a couple of days, and um, that actually feeds
into this other idea that it's useful for your magdala
to be processing both fear and pleasure because uh, you know,
necessarily want to um separate those two forms of stimulation
because situations change on the time. What could be pleasant
(14:55):
now could in five minutes, ten minutes a day later
be actually very fearful or unpleasant. So the brain has
to respond accordingly. And it's actually pretty brilliant way to
adapt very quickly situations to have the magdala uh. You know,
having this double duty now another huge aspect of fear
(15:15):
and uh and and this certainly flows over into into
our enjoyment of horror films and horror fiction and and
you know, quick improved scares around the house. Uh And
and that is the social context of it, because, like
a lot of things, we learn how it works from
seeing how others use it. We see how what other
(15:37):
people's fear responses, and from that we uh we begin
to piece together our own appropriate fear responses. It's true.
And uh. You know, we have mentioned kids and the
fact that they actually like to be scared. And I
even see this in my three year old at round
age two, she started saying chase me or you know,
pretending that I was you know, uh t rex or something.
(15:58):
Um and you do you see the same kids and
they really are trying to work out situations and this
is the idea behind why they do like to get scared.
Psychologist Paul Bloom's lab has actually shown four and five
year old films of other children reacting to movies now
he had to do that because for ethical reasons, he
couldn't get kids into his lab and then scare them, right,
(16:22):
um so, but he could show them images of children
who were scared, who were watching scary movies. When asked
which of the movies they would want to see, because
he shared them all different types of movies, boring movies,
happy movies, sad movies, scary movies. The four and five
year olds preferred the happy films, of course, but they
picked scary movies over the boring ones. And he says,
(16:45):
parents automatically assumed that children like stories with happy endings,
and he cited the Little Engine that Could, But he says,
what about the little Engine that that tried and failed?
It might be that children would find it perversely satisfying.
It's it's also worth noting here, um, not to jump
too far ahead, but most, maybe most, um, mainstream horror
(17:07):
films do have a happy ending. Um yeah, like you know,
you have a lot of bad stuff happened. But then
but if they follow the more stereotypical story arc of
these things, uh, you still have everything come back around
to some level of normalcy and some some manner of
a happy ending. Now, that that does not hold true
(17:27):
across the board. But if you think of some of
the stuff that's really mainstream, the stuff that is actually
up there in the box office, um, like Jaws, for instance,
what happens in the end of Jaws spoiler shark blows
up right right the the bad guy, the Boogeyman, is vanquished. Really,
and so we see that over and over again in stories.
We see fairy tales, right, and this is the stuff
(17:48):
that we feed our children's mind with from the get go.
I remember that not too long ago there were five
hundred year old um German fairy tales that were just unearthed,
and one of them was particularly gruesome. It was about
a witch who swallowed um, this girl. Actually the girls
trying to get away from the witch, she turned into water.
(18:09):
The witch swallowed her up and so then the girl
had to cut herself out of the witch's belly. And
you know this again, the reason why we're putting this
sort of information out there, um consciously or unconsciously, is
because you're trying to teach kids about dangers in the world.
And that's what storytelling and and really horror stories are
trying to tell you. Like, there is some sort of
(18:30):
moral code ascribed to what we're doing in the world. Um.
And there are consequences, and of course you have. Some
of the nursery boogies were just all about trying to
correct certain behaviors, like like the long Legged scissor Man,
the whole rhyme about We're basically it's you don't need
to suck your thumb because if you keep sucking your thumb,
the long legged scissor Man will show up and he
(18:50):
will slice your thumbs off. I never heard that, Oh,
you're really there's a there's a fun rhyme. If I
if I thought about it ahead of time, I would
have brought it. I would have brought it in prepared
so we could we could read it. But wow, okay, um,
I didn't get a lot of that kind of stuff
right to me as a child. It was mostly like
if you grow up in a Victorian it was mostly
like environmental literature like pop Cam Park and stuff like that. Um.
(19:15):
So yeah, I mean there's this idea that children are
learning what dangers are and people who they can trust
and not trust. Um. And there's something actually called Williams
syndrome and children and adults and this actually this syndrome
doesn't allow them to be fearful of anybody in any
sort of social situation. Um, they are hyper social people
(19:38):
with William syndrome. They love people and they are literally
pathologically trusting of people right now. And then not to
imply that all hyper social activity and UH in small
kids is definitely tied up in this condition. You also
have situations where kids will be hyper social because they've
grown up in an early environment where it is advantageous
(19:59):
to be UH ultrasocial with various people moving through their lives,
particularly and say UH an institutionalized setting like an ape
as yeah, right, as as as a way to adapt. Um.
But with with people with true Williams syndrome readers, researchers
actually think that their limbic system, the part of the
brain that regulates emotion, is wired differently, and there appears
(20:21):
to be a disregulation in one of the chemicals oxytocin
we've taught. We've called that the love hormone. Before that
signals went to trust and went to distrust. And parents
of kids with William syndrome have to be really vigilant
about teaching their children to distrust people, because they truly
will they really sensed no fear whatsoever. And we'll run
up to anybody and uh and pretty much say, hey,
(20:44):
what's going on? Come home with me? All right, we're
gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
we're going to discuss Catharsis and our old friend benign violation.
Oh that old friend, right, we're back, so benign violation.
You may remember this from when we talked about humor.
What makes something funny? According to some theories of humor, um,
(21:09):
it's the fact that we're threatened but not really. Something
that seems like it's gonna kill us is actually just
a joke, and therefore we laugh. It's our our our
way of communicating to our fellow cave people that that
there's no real threat, that the what we thought was
a savor tooth tiger jumping out of the the underbrush
to consume us was actually just thog having a laugh
(21:32):
at our expense. And then we all kind of laugh
because we were so frightened and really sacrificed thog to
our red gods. Right, but then the sabre tooth tiger
in the actual horror film does come out right after
the laughter rime. Right, But but the benign violation definitely
plays into our consumption of horror because, like we discussed earlier,
all this stuff is going on in your brain. You're
watching this horror movie, you're reading this horror book. Your
(21:54):
body is responding accordingly, and then your brain kicks in
and says, WHOA, Just to keep in mind, this is
just a movie. It's not real. Uh and uh, and
thank goodness that part of the brain is there to
remind us of this. But it results in this benign
violation area where we're threatened but not really. There's something horrible,
(22:15):
but it actually can't hurt us, right, so you know
that the threats not there. And UM, I do think
it's very interesting that it has such a parallel with humor.
And indeed, like we're discussing the humor situation, what happens
when you go to see a horror movie? Uh, in
a movie theater, Well, when people are not checking their email,
talking on the phone, uh, smoking um illegal substances, or
(22:38):
talking with their friends, or eating popcorn, eating nachos, making out,
drinking sodas, really loudly talking to their child who is
inappropriately attending the film. It is a long list of
things that happened that are not movie viewing in a
like you just took that list out of your pocket
went down. But one of the other things they do
(22:58):
is they laugh when something horrible happens, which is something
I line up on that list of things I hate
about seeing films with other people, uh list. But but
it's something that actually lines up with the signs and
we're looking at here because it's the benign violation. It's
it's the fact that something horrible happened and they didn't die.
It produces laughter, and I can't get too irritated at
(23:20):
that because it's tied into our evolutionary history. Well it
is cathartic. Yeah, right, So but here's here's the thing.
So one are the eating nachos, because if they're scared,
they should have there. That's the other thing that gives
me so like, people will go into a film to
see something like Schindler's List or some sort of horror
film and they have nachos. All we're gonna pay for
it afterward. But that's not your problem, man, But they're
(23:43):
gonna lose their appetite. You're in the fearful moments anyway,
what are you gonna do? Like say, hey, man, don't
eat those nachos, like you're you're gonna produce too much
stomach acid because you're in an altered state maybe, and
and too much noise. They should soak those things more
in that yellow gook Beforehands of the Knife and Sagi. Anyway, Um,
that kind of episode. What was I talking about? Well,
I think we're talking about trying to master our fear
(24:05):
in Catharsis. Yes, Catharsis. Catharsis, just remind everybody this is uh,
the purging of emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially
through certain kinds of art, such as tragedy or music. Um.
It's the pleasure that comes from the relief that follows. Right. Um.
And it's interesting to note that a lot of horror
(24:27):
flicks are really geared toward teenagers and twentysomethings. Um. John
Edward Campbell, who is an expert in media studies at
Templing University, said that that people in those age groups
are more likely to look for intense experiences, while older
people have stimulation fatigue. Uh. He says, life's real horrors
(24:48):
scare them or they don't find them entertaining anymore or interesting. Yeah,
and then Freud he even piped in and this suggests
that the horror was appealing because it traffics in quote
thoughts and feeling things that have been repressed by the
ego but which seem vaguely familiar. So lining up with that,
and also outside of that, you have her as a
(25:09):
form of this. This can be this form of therapy
where we're we're dealing with the things that we're afraid of,
but informs that make more sense, be it a social
concern that is personified or some sort of just you know,
the fear of death personified into something that can be
uh dealt with on a on a like a more
of a clear cut level. We talked about zombies before,
(25:31):
Like you can look at zombies that way, zombies as
this uh it's this, this clear cut personification of various
fears that can be dealt with in a pretty clear
cut manner. Most of our fears we can't shoot dead
in the street with a shotgun, um not, and and
still maintain a, you know, our fair standing in society.
(25:52):
H Zombies and the zombie fiction allows us to engage
in that kind of a world where there is good
and there is zombie and they're cleanly dealt with through
a specified means of taking them down, you know. Um,
I was just thinking too, And when you're young, when
you're really young, um, and then even when you're a
teenager in your early twenties, you are still grappling with
(26:15):
this idea that one day you will die, right that
This is this ultimately is the problem that we're dealing with.
This is why horror films are so entrancing to us. Yeah,
you can boil a lot of harror down to just
basically us trying to figure out mortality. Yeah, it's the
basic human condition of existential fear, right, Like we know
that eventually all of us will be entering that that
(26:35):
doorstep of death. And so I was just thinking about
how you said, uh, that you might be overly wrapped
with um the macab because of growing up and celebrating Halloween,
And the same thing in my family happened. I mean,
my dad would play the pit and the pendulum against
the house, like protecting against the house every year, and
(26:55):
he would turn our yard into a graveyard. And our
favorite movies of family to this day, and this was
one of my brother I was five and my brother
was seven is Harold and maud Okay, which which is
about a very morose kid. It's about death and his
occupation with I can't remember he's but Holly was telling
(27:16):
me how disconcerting it is to see him in pictures
today because he was Yeah, but he his character was
preoccupied with death. Um. He would pull off these hoax
deaths all the time, or suicides. And my brother used
to do the same thing. So he would, like, you know,
we'd be eating dinner and he'd go get up to
go the bathroom, and the next thing you know, you
would see him dragging his body if you've ever seen
(27:39):
when someone do that across the threshold, you know, from
the door. So we so it looked like someone was
dragging his body. He was always pretending to be Harold.
And now that I think about it, that that was
a really fun way for her, for us to kind
of get a beat on that subject on death and
work it out. I suppose um. One of my favorite
(28:00):
cart that's that's very cathartic. Um. One of my favorite
commentators on all of this is is Stephen King, who,
in his intro to his short story collection Night Shift
Um has us a lot of really interesting things to
say about not only the craft of writing stories in
his own experiences with with writing horror, but also what
he sees as the meaning of it. And he keeps
making allusions to the Uh you know, you've heard the
(28:22):
idea of the blind men and men and the elephant.
Right where there's an elephant and there are these there's
this pack of blind men and they're pawing at the elephant,
and each one is feeling a different part of the
elephant and thus describing it differently. Like the person the
blind man touching the the the legs of the elephant says, Oh,
it's like it's like a pole, and then the person
touching the trunks as that it's like a snake. And
(28:44):
uh King makes this um, this argument that horror allows
us to paw at this equally um unseen body that
is death. Um, I'm gonna read a quick quote from
He says, children learn fear quickly. They pick it up
off their mother or father's faces when the parent comes
into the bathroom and sees them with the bottle of
(29:05):
pills or the safety razor. Fear makes us blind, and
we uh, fear makes us blind, and we touch each
fear with all the avid curiosity of self interest, trying
to make a hole out of a hundred parts. Like
the blind men with their elephant. We sense the shape.
Children grasped it easily, forget it, and relearn it as adults.
The shape is there, and most of us come to
(29:27):
realize what it is sooner or later. It is the
shape of a body under our sheet, under a sheet.
So I thought that sums it up rather nicely. Uh.
As far as just a horror as our wrestling with mortality, yeah,
I don't think anybody can put it better than Stephen
King and um, and then there's all I've I mentioned before.
You know, monsters. Anytime we're dealing with monsters, monsters almost
(29:50):
always signify something they're not just a such situation about.
You know, it'd be scary if we had there's a guy,
but his his head was a wolf's head. Wouldn't that
be That would be scary. Let's just throw that in there.
I mean, that may be the level of thinking engaged
in the creation of the particular story or myth. But
deeper down, um, we even look to the like the
word monster. The word monstrosity originates from the Latin uh monstery,
(30:14):
which means to show or illustrate a point. So all
of our monsters, no matter how gross or poorly designed,
they embodied ideas, fears, and abstractions about the human condition,
be it about death or disease, be it a social
concern or um, you know what, have you eased even ourselves?
(30:35):
How we can be unknowable to ourselves? Exactly? Yes, certainly
when you look at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde King.
Also in this uh, this intro, he he describes hard
to as a kind of replacement therapy you know where.
And this gets a little into Catharsis, but but more
along the lines of I have certain things in my
(30:55):
life that, um, that caused me a certain the level
of anxiety, and um, wouldn't it be nice if I
could replace that for a little bit with some imagined
anxiety that's even worse, so an escapism that makes my
lot in life look not so bad? Yeah, he says.
The horror story writer is not so different from the
Welsh sin eater who was supposed to take upon himself
(31:16):
the sins of the deer departed by partaking of the
deer departed's food. The tale of Monstrosity and tearor is
a basket loosely packed with phobious When the writer passes by,
you take one of his imaginary horrors out of the
basket and you put one of your real ones in
at least for a time, which I thought it was
an interesting way of looking at it. Well, very cool. Um,
(31:38):
I think that these are different ways to kind of
come at the subject. But at the end of the day, Um,
you know, there's there's something that a psychologist named Glenn
Waltz's of Cuttown University. What he said I thought was
was resonated with me. He said, control lost under the
cover of darkness is rediscovered in the light of day.
Danger posed by things unknown is reduced by increased knowledge
(32:01):
and predict predictability. And I thought that is really what
it's about. I mean, any sort of story is a
bit of a training wheels for us to try to
occupy this this space in our mind. We try to
imagine ourselves in these horrific moments. Um, So it is instructive. Yeah,
in that context, I'll be sure to do a blog
post to go along with this podcast, and so as
(32:24):
to cut down in time now, I will list some
other favorite bits of horrorsh fiction or horror uh film
um in that blog post you can check it out.
So as gonna leave this podcast and our contemplation of
fearful and horrible things and and how real and imagine, yeah,
real and imagine, and how looking into the darkness can
(32:45):
help us conquer the darkness. Here's a little bit of
geeky uh quotiness from one of my favorite authors, Frank Herbert. Uh,
you'll recognize it. He said, Uh, I must not fear.
Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death.
It brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I
will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the
(33:07):
inner eye to see its path. Where fear has gone,
there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Hallelujah. Yeah,
So who's for that in your mind? Next time you
watch something frightening on TV that isn't the news. If
it leads, it leads. All right, do we have an
email there? Yes, there's Well, I feel like we've probably
(33:29):
went a little along, so I'm just gonna have the
robot share one of these with us, all right. This
is from one Albert Albert Wright cent and says Hi,
Robert and Julie. I finished listening to the centaur episode.
Very interesting. Just wanted to pass on something regarding centaur sex.
John Varley UH in his science fiction novel Titan, explored
(33:49):
this very topic. Astronauts end up exploring a space station
and one of the species they meet our centaurs. These
centaurs have both human genitalia and equine genitalia, and the
two parts do not necessarily match, meaning a centaur with
a male human package can have a female equine package.
The author explores a lot of interesting topics in sexuality
(34:12):
in this novel. I highly recommend it. Uh. That is awesome.
John Varley UM. For those of you who are not
familiar with him, he uh wrote a lot of science
fiction back in the day. He also wrote one particular
story called Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. UH. And there
was a kind of awesome, kind of cheesy PBS adaptation
(34:32):
of this story of starring Rawl Rawle Julia back in
the day, and it was actually featured on Mystery Science
Theater three thousand Adams Family role Julia. Yeah, Yeah, that's
that raw Julia. Great actor. UM. Kind of a very
cheesy production, A lot of kind of matrix C type
special effects before we really have the ability to pull
that off. Um, but if you could see the strings
(34:54):
on them as they bent backward. Yeah, but it is
cheesy as it is. There are some factless ideas explored
in that, and so it doesn't come it's too much
of a surprise that John Varley also explored the topic
of a cent to our sexuality. So there you go, um,
and Tina's placement and and other equipment. There you go.
So it sounds like one worth checking out there. Thanks
(35:15):
Albert for bringing that to attention. And uh, if any
of you would like to discuss the topic of centaur
sexuality or horror with us, you know where to find
us on both at the same there is a lot
of overlap between us two topics. I would I mentioned.
You can find us on Facebook where we are stuff
to Blow your Mind, and you can find us on
(35:36):
Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind. Let us
know your experiences with horror fiction, horror movies, what scares
you and what are your thoughts on the the freight
process inside your mind? And you can always drop us
a line at blew the Mind at discovery dot com.
(35:57):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join houstaf Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what is your relationship with horror stories, with horror movies,
with horror fiction. Um, well, you're a fan. Well, well, yeah,
(00:24):
I would say that I'm not as much anymore. And
I became really sensitive to horror in any sort of
form um when my after my daughter was born. Actually
well I was pregnant, so I have been slowly ramping
back up, back back up into zombie land. Uh. But
I used to love the Ripper stuff. I'm not a ripperologist,
(00:47):
but that that was something that occupied my mind for
for many, many years and a ripper enthusiast enthusiast. Sure, sure,
I like that. Um but yeah, yeah, that's that's uh
stuff that I think is absolutely frightening and takes hold
of your mind and you can't help being transport. And
I'm pretty sure that you have a good and lengthy
(01:08):
relationship with horror. Yeah yeah, I um, I mean from
very early on, possibly because my my my mom's explanation
for this is that she is that they always made
too much out of Halloween, or that they really celebrated
Halloween in our households. So it kind of instilled an
early fascination with with them a cob and and and
(01:30):
perhaps that that's the case, but I mean from a
very early age, I was fascinated with with these fantastic
stories and settings and and any kind of creepy tales. UM.
I remember like when I was in uh younger grades,
we would would go to the video store to rent
movies as a family, or I'd go there with my dad,
(01:51):
and we were not horror movie renting people, but I
would sneak over or even not really sneak, but I would.
I would go over to the horror and I would
walk down I would look at all the vhs uh
covers And it was a pretty uh, pretty crazy experience
doing that because on one hand, especially in you know,
back in the back in the nineties, these uh, these
(02:13):
VHS covers, they even the crappiest film might have a
really awesome bit of poster art on the cover, awesome title,
really awesome stelf and uh. And as we've discussed before,
I think that like the first episode we did with
each other, or the second about people turning inside out.
There was one film that had a picture of a
guy turning inside out on the cover, and the actual
(02:34):
film has nothing to do with that. And it didn't
you say, he had like jeans onto you, And that
was what was so just concerting, as he was turning
himself inside out or he was inside out, and yet
he had jeans on like me. Maybe he knew he
was going to turn inside out and he has a
real version of nudity, so he swallowed some gene shorts
before the poisonous miss could transform him. How that happened.
But they always had, you know, even if it was
(02:55):
it was something just crazy, out of the ordinary, just
a lost beef home, it might have some really neat
cover going on. And then the mainstream hits, they all
had fascinating covers, be it like a Friday the thirteen
or a Nightmare on Elm Street. And and I would
always build up in my mind this, uh, this creative
version of what that film must consist of, and generally,
(03:17):
you know, it's it's not an idea that would stand
the test of time when I actually watched the film
later on the road. So yeah, from a from a
very early point, I was very interested in these in
horror stories and some of the first books I started
reading a really hardcore where Stephen King books, and then
we got really into love craft, and and I still
(03:37):
I still read a certain amount of horror. Some of
it maybe is a little more literary, some of it
is significantly less literary, depending on I guess what my
mood is, and I write stories that are horror or
horror esque in nature. So right, we'll get to the
crux of what we're talking about in a moment. But
(03:57):
you want to talk about as soon as I'm through rampling, No, no, no,
about what you've written and in some upcoming information about that. Oh,
I do have a book of short stories. It's going
to be out eventually, but I don't it's a book
of Southern short stories and it's called it's going to
be called The Grave Stoppers, I believe. Yeah. Okay, so
look forward to and we'll give you, guess some more
(04:19):
information on that. But I think that's really exciting to
talk about. I'm excited about it. It's just got a
little more editing tweaking to do. Um. But yeah, the
the topic here, we're talking about horror. We're talking about
our fascination with horror and kids fascination kids, because that's
the thing, Like, like I mentioned earlier, from a very
early age, I was interested in what these stories consisted of,
(04:41):
even if they were forbidden to me, and you know,
probably in certain to a certain extent because they were
forbidden to me. But but all kids seem to have
this this obsession on some level with with what is
waiting in the closet right what is behind the shower
curtain or looking at in the bottom of the toilet,
you know. And and and that is so true because um,
(05:03):
I remember just hating these stories when I was a
little but loving them the same time, like tell me again,
and tell me again, and then just you know, sitting
in my bed thinking about how a severed hand was
going to come and strangle me to death. They're talking
about the toilet story. Oh they did think made me
think about the toilet first for a moment, because I
kind of think at some point I thought a severed
hand might come out of the toilet too. When I
(05:23):
was a little I'll see, I was poisoned by the
VHS covers because they had these awful doolies films and
that it pictured that the cover arts are are amazing
because they picture these really bad looking puppets. Not these
were not hints and creations, but like horrible little goblin
puppets coming out of the toilet. And the idea, I
think the tagline was like they get you in the
end or something, because you're exposed, you're vulnerable on the
(05:46):
toilet and as a kid, there there are other anxieties
tied up with with using the toilet anyway. And then
throw in the fact that there might be a goblin
down there that might eat you in the bomb that
in the that's that's problem out right there. Well, let's
talk a little bit about clowns for a moment um,
because you know what you're talking about, toilets and scary stuff.
(06:09):
You've gotta go to clowns. Um, I'm not the only
person who's frightened of clowns. Apparently this is something that
a lot of people have a phobia of. And there
is one study that I thought was very interesting. Um.
The University of Sheffield study asked more than two fifty
children ages four to sixteen, what they thought of the
idea of using clown imagery to decorate a hospital children's ward.
(06:31):
Because this is really they were trying to figure out
what they wanted to make this ward look like to
make the kids feel more at home. According to Dr
Penny Curtis, who helped conduct the study, quote, we found
that clowns were universally disliked by children. Some found them
quite frightening and unknowable. And unknowable I thought that was
(06:52):
a really interesting word choice because I thought that I
think is part of the problem with clowns. Um. And
think anybody who's listening that has same feeling about clowns
that I do. There's this idea that you know, there's
some someone hiding behind a mask, not showing their true
self well, and their skin is ghostly pale, and then
grease paint. It's just and they're doing you know, creepy tricks. Um.
(07:16):
But sometimes they're saving rodeo people from certain goring at
the hands of a bull. You gotta respect the rodeo clowns.
I don't know. I don't know about I think the
rodeo clown has perhaps be most frightening because then you
just put a cowboy head on top. It's just it
doesn't work well. One way. I see this tying and
what we're talking about today. The rodeo clown especially is
(07:37):
kind of distracting you from the idea of death. And
maybe we sort of see that, see through that to
a certain extent, you know, and we kind of we
can't we see the con going on and we don't
want to buy into it. That's not a clown having fun.
That is one dude trying to save another guy from
getting run through with bullhorns. I don't know about that.
I think that is the clown trying to add more
(07:57):
distraction so that the the radio person will be gored
to death. Because I mean, I do not see anything
there that's that's um, that is genuine, that's that's beneficial. Well,
we'll tell me. There's one more thing about clowns here. Um.
And I encountered the clown phobia a lot because it
seems like everybody has it. Um. But I started with
(08:19):
jesters for me, by the way, jester for the record, no,
just court jesters. Those guys, well there with court jesters,
I feel like they're a little more honest because the
court jester is obviously adult and his and his and
is also in such close proximity to a mad ruler.
They're really hanging on by a thread. They have to
walk that line every day. Um? And can I make
(08:41):
the king laugh without actually uh winding up in the dungeon?
You know? So I feel for those guys along, But
but tell me this, how about the sad clowns? How
about the sad hobo clowns? Like like, mkelly, are you kidding?
Like that's that's that's the worst? How is that the worst?
Was just even you see him and he's just the
hobo clown, you know, with stubble on the chimp, a
(09:04):
cigarette hanging out, you know, two coins in his pocket,
has a hole in it. That's uplifting for a child
right there there hoping it has that hobo mystique about him.
You know, it's the traveler, he's got emperiences. Um okay.
So I think the question is why do we keep
going to material that that unearth these uneasy feelings? So
(09:26):
why did I read Stephen King's it? And I couldn't
put it down? Um? You know, and and it features
a prominent clown, right. I think there's people when they
think about clowns, they usually think kings. Ye, why do
we keep doing this? And scientists believe that The answer
is that humans have evolved to actually enjoy fear, and
that we there's a type of personality that really enjoys it.
(09:49):
We've talked about this person before. It's the neophiliac. It's
like the type T right, Type T. Yeah, this is
the person who craves new experiences, really wants a jolt,
and that's because they have a lot more dopamine flowing
and we already know that they are genetic markers for this, right. Um,
So this is something that is hardwired in some people.
But that being said, even if you're not a type
(10:11):
TIE person or a neophiliac, usually most people enjoy good
scare to some degree. So should I walk us through
the the the the shadow of the value of death.
Al Right, So let's say you're watching something scary or
or reading something scary. Um, I don't know. Let's say
it's our textis Chainsaw Masker. That's that was one that
(10:33):
always got on. Um. So you're watching this right, Yeah,
the horror on the screen and uh and in the
soundtrack because it has a fabulous sound design. Uh, runs
into your ears, into your eyes, and it all winds
up in this little almond shaped clump of neurons called
the amygdala. All right, right, we've talked about the Magdola
processes all sorts of emotions front and center. Yeah, it's
(10:57):
vital to emotional processing, especially thanks like glove, pleasure, and
of course fear um. So Amigola activate unless she's all this,
All these brain and body cocktails into your body, All
these hormones, all right, yeah, Yeah, prompts the adrenal glands
to turn out cortisol, which is a stress hormone, and
(11:18):
high levels of this can actually impede insulin and causes
the rise in blood sugar. Gives you a little extra
fuel because you the brain is telling you something scary
is happening and you might have to either run from
it or attack it with a stick. So yeah, you
can need extra oxygen for that. So you're breathing faster.
The body is saying, all right, let's do it. We're
gonna fight or flight. I'm going to make sure that
(11:40):
you have enough oxygen for it. Heart is racing so
that oxygen can get to your muscles. Your appetite stalls,
because if you're about to have to fight leather face,
you don't you don't want to have to stop for
a snack break or granola bar bar halfway through it um,
which I think would be a nice take because you know,
in the slasher films, what always happens to the the
survey of her lady, right, she ends up knocking down
(12:02):
Jason Vorhees or somehow incapacitating our killer, kicking him in
the the nethers or something hitting him on the head,
and then they're down. And instead of doing the logical thing,
which is either which is fight or flight, which is
either run all the way away into the next county
or never stop hitting the down maniac in the face
(12:22):
with a brick fight it finish it right, Instead, they
set there next to the the killer and maybe weep
a little bit until they actually wait back up again
and it all starts a new But it would be
a nice twist if if they stopped and they actually
use that time to have a granilla bar and yeah,
little sacket of snack mix. That would be you know,
if anybody's listening in there, they're writing the next screenplay
for screen ten or whatever we're on though. All right,
(12:45):
so but that's not all Your appetite is stalled, and
you're also you're sweating because we don't want you to
overheat in this fight or flight scenario, all right, your
pupils are dilated so that you can see the enemy better,
because again the body is getting you ready to either
fight it or flight it. And uh. And finally, the
cortisol saturated your bloodstream and feeds back in the nicola
(13:06):
to boost the perception of danger. So it also reinforces
your memory of that initial fright so that you'll still
feel a little jumpy. Because the idea here is like
I got attacked by Jason Vorhees today, I might be
attacked by another Jason Vorhees tomorrow. So it stays in
your system for a few days. That's why something frightful happens,
you're you maybe a little jumpy for a little bit afterwards,
(13:26):
for you know, days. And this all happens within about
three seconds. And while all this is happening, information also
travels to your prefrontal cortex, and this is part of
the brain responsible for consciously evaluating danger and it tells you,
thankfully that this is just a movie. And so what
happens is you are completely overstimulated, right, and the resulting
(13:50):
spillover is processed as reward instead of fear because all
of a sudden you think, oh, yes, okay, it's okay,
there's there's no imminent threat. I have actually served vibed
what I just imagined for myself. Yeah, because the other thing,
if you're about to potentially fight Jason Vorhees or run
from him, um, the body is also helping out by
making sure that the that their endorphins released into your
(14:13):
bloodstream because you're going to sustain injuries if you're fighting
him or running through the woods to escape him. So
so you end up having dopamine, uh flowing through the
system is feel good drug that if you're not actually
having to fight or run away, is just going to
be there to make you feel good, you know. And
you mentioned to you that cortisol lingers in your blood
(14:34):
for a couple of days, and um, that actually feeds
into this other idea that it's useful for your magdala
to be processing both fear and pleasure because uh, you know,
necessarily want to um separate those two forms of stimulation
because situations change on the time. What could be pleasant
(14:55):
now could in five minutes, ten minutes a day later
be actually very fearful or unpleasant. So the brain has
to respond accordingly. And it's actually pretty brilliant way to
adapt very quickly situations to have the magdala uh. You know,
having this double duty now another huge aspect of fear
(15:15):
and uh and and this certainly flows over into into
our enjoyment of horror films and horror fiction and and
you know, quick improved scares around the house. Uh And
and that is the social context of it, because, like
a lot of things, we learn how it works from
seeing how others use it. We see how what other
(15:37):
people's fear responses, and from that we uh we begin
to piece together our own appropriate fear responses. It's true.
And uh. You know, we have mentioned kids and the
fact that they actually like to be scared. And I
even see this in my three year old at round
age two, she started saying chase me or you know,
pretending that I was you know, uh t rex or something.
(15:58):
Um and you do you see the same kids and
they really are trying to work out situations and this
is the idea behind why they do like to get scared.
Psychologist Paul Bloom's lab has actually shown four and five
year old films of other children reacting to movies now
he had to do that because for ethical reasons, he
couldn't get kids into his lab and then scare them, right,
(16:22):
um so, but he could show them images of children
who were scared, who were watching scary movies. When asked
which of the movies they would want to see, because
he shared them all different types of movies, boring movies,
happy movies, sad movies, scary movies. The four and five
year olds preferred the happy films, of course, but they
picked scary movies over the boring ones. And he says,
(16:45):
parents automatically assumed that children like stories with happy endings,
and he cited the Little Engine that Could, But he says,
what about the little Engine that that tried and failed?
It might be that children would find it perversely satisfying.
It's it's also worth noting here, um, not to jump
too far ahead, but most, maybe most, um, mainstream horror
(17:07):
films do have a happy ending. Um yeah, like you know,
you have a lot of bad stuff happened. But then
but if they follow the more stereotypical story arc of
these things, uh, you still have everything come back around
to some level of normalcy and some some manner of
a happy ending. Now, that that does not hold true
(17:27):
across the board. But if you think of some of
the stuff that's really mainstream, the stuff that is actually
up there in the box office, um, like Jaws, for instance,
what happens in the end of Jaws spoiler shark blows
up right right the the bad guy, the Boogeyman, is vanquished. Really,
and so we see that over and over again in stories.
We see fairy tales, right, and this is the stuff
(17:48):
that we feed our children's mind with from the get go.
I remember that not too long ago there were five
hundred year old um German fairy tales that were just unearthed,
and one of them was particularly gruesome. It was about
a witch who swallowed um, this girl. Actually the girls
trying to get away from the witch, she turned into water.
(18:09):
The witch swallowed her up and so then the girl
had to cut herself out of the witch's belly. And
you know this again, the reason why we're putting this
sort of information out there, um consciously or unconsciously, is
because you're trying to teach kids about dangers in the world.
And that's what storytelling and and really horror stories are
trying to tell you. Like, there is some sort of
(18:30):
moral code ascribed to what we're doing in the world. Um.
And there are consequences, and of course you have. Some
of the nursery boogies were just all about trying to
correct certain behaviors, like like the long Legged scissor Man,
the whole rhyme about We're basically it's you don't need
to suck your thumb because if you keep sucking your thumb,
the long legged scissor Man will show up and he
(18:50):
will slice your thumbs off. I never heard that, Oh,
you're really there's a there's a fun rhyme. If I
if I thought about it ahead of time, I would
have brought it. I would have brought it in prepared
so we could we could read it. But wow, okay, um,
I didn't get a lot of that kind of stuff
right to me as a child. It was mostly like
if you grow up in a Victorian it was mostly
like environmental literature like pop Cam Park and stuff like that. Um.
(19:15):
So yeah, I mean there's this idea that children are
learning what dangers are and people who they can trust
and not trust. Um. And there's something actually called Williams
syndrome and children and adults and this actually this syndrome
doesn't allow them to be fearful of anybody in any
sort of social situation. Um, they are hyper social people
(19:38):
with William syndrome. They love people and they are literally
pathologically trusting of people right now. And then not to
imply that all hyper social activity and UH in small
kids is definitely tied up in this condition. You also
have situations where kids will be hyper social because they've
grown up in an early environment where it is advantageous
(19:59):
to be UH ultrasocial with various people moving through their lives,
particularly and say UH an institutionalized setting like an ape
as yeah, right, as as as a way to adapt. Um.
But with with people with true Williams syndrome readers, researchers
actually think that their limbic system, the part of the
brain that regulates emotion, is wired differently, and there appears
(20:21):
to be a disregulation in one of the chemicals oxytocin
we've taught. We've called that the love hormone. Before that
signals went to trust and went to distrust. And parents
of kids with William syndrome have to be really vigilant
about teaching their children to distrust people, because they truly
will they really sensed no fear whatsoever. And we'll run
up to anybody and uh and pretty much say, hey,
(20:44):
what's going on? Come home with me? All right, we're
gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
we're going to discuss Catharsis and our old friend benign violation.
Oh that old friend, right, we're back, so benign violation.
You may remember this from when we talked about humor.
What makes something funny? According to some theories of humor, um,
(21:09):
it's the fact that we're threatened but not really. Something
that seems like it's gonna kill us is actually just
a joke, and therefore we laugh. It's our our our
way of communicating to our fellow cave people that that
there's no real threat, that the what we thought was
a savor tooth tiger jumping out of the the underbrush
to consume us was actually just thog having a laugh
(21:32):
at our expense. And then we all kind of laugh
because we were so frightened and really sacrificed thog to
our red gods. Right, but then the sabre tooth tiger
in the actual horror film does come out right after
the laughter rime. Right, But but the benign violation definitely
plays into our consumption of horror because, like we discussed earlier,
all this stuff is going on in your brain. You're
watching this horror movie, you're reading this horror book. Your
(21:54):
body is responding accordingly, and then your brain kicks in
and says, WHOA, Just to keep in mind, this is
just a movie. It's not real. Uh and uh, and
thank goodness that part of the brain is there to
remind us of this. But it results in this benign
violation area where we're threatened but not really. There's something horrible,
(22:15):
but it actually can't hurt us, right, so you know
that the threats not there. And UM, I do think
it's very interesting that it has such a parallel with humor.
And indeed, like we're discussing the humor situation, what happens
when you go to see a horror movie? Uh, in
a movie theater, Well, when people are not checking their email,
talking on the phone, uh, smoking um illegal substances, or
(22:38):
talking with their friends, or eating popcorn, eating nachos, making out,
drinking sodas, really loudly talking to their child who is
inappropriately attending the film. It is a long list of
things that happened that are not movie viewing in a
like you just took that list out of your pocket
went down. But one of the other things they do
(22:58):
is they laugh when something horrible happens, which is something
I line up on that list of things I hate
about seeing films with other people, uh list. But but
it's something that actually lines up with the signs and
we're looking at here because it's the benign violation. It's
it's the fact that something horrible happened and they didn't die.
It produces laughter, and I can't get too irritated at
(23:20):
that because it's tied into our evolutionary history. Well it
is cathartic. Yeah, right, So but here's here's the thing.
So one are the eating nachos, because if they're scared,
they should have there. That's the other thing that gives
me so like, people will go into a film to
see something like Schindler's List or some sort of horror
film and they have nachos. All we're gonna pay for
it afterward. But that's not your problem, man, But they're
(23:43):
gonna lose their appetite. You're in the fearful moments anyway,
what are you gonna do? Like say, hey, man, don't
eat those nachos, like you're you're gonna produce too much
stomach acid because you're in an altered state maybe, and
and too much noise. They should soak those things more
in that yellow gook Beforehands of the Knife and Sagi. Anyway, Um,
that kind of episode. What was I talking about? Well,
I think we're talking about trying to master our fear
(24:05):
in Catharsis. Yes, Catharsis. Catharsis, just remind everybody this is uh,
the purging of emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially
through certain kinds of art, such as tragedy or music. Um.
It's the pleasure that comes from the relief that follows. Right. Um.
And it's interesting to note that a lot of horror
(24:27):
flicks are really geared toward teenagers and twentysomethings. Um. John
Edward Campbell, who is an expert in media studies at
Templing University, said that that people in those age groups
are more likely to look for intense experiences, while older
people have stimulation fatigue. Uh. He says, life's real horrors
(24:48):
scare them or they don't find them entertaining anymore or interesting. Yeah,
and then Freud he even piped in and this suggests
that the horror was appealing because it traffics in quote
thoughts and feeling things that have been repressed by the
ego but which seem vaguely familiar. So lining up with that,
and also outside of that, you have her as a
(25:09):
form of this. This can be this form of therapy
where we're we're dealing with the things that we're afraid of,
but informs that make more sense, be it a social
concern that is personified or some sort of just you know,
the fear of death personified into something that can be
uh dealt with on a on a like a more
of a clear cut level. We talked about zombies before,
(25:31):
Like you can look at zombies that way, zombies as
this uh it's this, this clear cut personification of various
fears that can be dealt with in a pretty clear
cut manner. Most of our fears we can't shoot dead
in the street with a shotgun, um not, and and
still maintain a, you know, our fair standing in society.
(25:52):
H Zombies and the zombie fiction allows us to engage
in that kind of a world where there is good
and there is zombie and they're cleanly dealt with through
a specified means of taking them down, you know. Um,
I was just thinking too, And when you're young, when
you're really young, um, and then even when you're a
teenager in your early twenties, you are still grappling with
(26:15):
this idea that one day you will die, right that
This is this ultimately is the problem that we're dealing with.
This is why horror films are so entrancing to us. Yeah,
you can boil a lot of harror down to just
basically us trying to figure out mortality. Yeah, it's the
basic human condition of existential fear, right, Like we know
that eventually all of us will be entering that that
(26:35):
doorstep of death. And so I was just thinking about
how you said, uh, that you might be overly wrapped
with um the macab because of growing up and celebrating Halloween,
And the same thing in my family happened. I mean,
my dad would play the pit and the pendulum against
the house, like protecting against the house every year, and
(26:55):
he would turn our yard into a graveyard. And our
favorite movies of family to this day, and this was
one of my brother I was five and my brother
was seven is Harold and maud Okay, which which is
about a very morose kid. It's about death and his
occupation with I can't remember he's but Holly was telling
(27:16):
me how disconcerting it is to see him in pictures
today because he was Yeah, but he his character was
preoccupied with death. Um. He would pull off these hoax
deaths all the time, or suicides. And my brother used
to do the same thing. So he would, like, you know,
we'd be eating dinner and he'd go get up to
go the bathroom, and the next thing you know, you
would see him dragging his body if you've ever seen
(27:39):
when someone do that across the threshold, you know, from
the door. So we so it looked like someone was
dragging his body. He was always pretending to be Harold.
And now that I think about it, that that was
a really fun way for her, for us to kind
of get a beat on that subject on death and
work it out. I suppose um. One of my favorite
(28:00):
cart that's that's very cathartic. Um. One of my favorite
commentators on all of this is is Stephen King, who,
in his intro to his short story collection Night Shift
Um has us a lot of really interesting things to
say about not only the craft of writing stories in
his own experiences with with writing horror, but also what
he sees as the meaning of it. And he keeps
making allusions to the Uh you know, you've heard the
(28:22):
idea of the blind men and men and the elephant.
Right where there's an elephant and there are these there's
this pack of blind men and they're pawing at the elephant,
and each one is feeling a different part of the
elephant and thus describing it differently. Like the person the
blind man touching the the the legs of the elephant says, Oh,
it's like it's like a pole, and then the person
touching the trunks as that it's like a snake. And
(28:44):
uh King makes this um, this argument that horror allows
us to paw at this equally um unseen body that
is death. Um, I'm gonna read a quick quote from
He says, children learn fear quickly. They pick it up
off their mother or father's faces when the parent comes
into the bathroom and sees them with the bottle of
(29:05):
pills or the safety razor. Fear makes us blind, and
we uh, fear makes us blind, and we touch each
fear with all the avid curiosity of self interest, trying
to make a hole out of a hundred parts. Like
the blind men with their elephant. We sense the shape.
Children grasped it easily, forget it, and relearn it as adults.
The shape is there, and most of us come to
(29:27):
realize what it is sooner or later. It is the
shape of a body under our sheet, under a sheet.
So I thought that sums it up rather nicely. Uh.
As far as just a horror as our wrestling with mortality, yeah,
I don't think anybody can put it better than Stephen
King and um, and then there's all I've I mentioned before.
You know, monsters. Anytime we're dealing with monsters, monsters almost
(29:50):
always signify something they're not just a such situation about.
You know, it'd be scary if we had there's a guy,
but his his head was a wolf's head. Wouldn't that
be That would be scary. Let's just throw that in there.
I mean, that may be the level of thinking engaged
in the creation of the particular story or myth. But
deeper down, um, we even look to the like the
word monster. The word monstrosity originates from the Latin uh monstery,
(30:14):
which means to show or illustrate a point. So all
of our monsters, no matter how gross or poorly designed,
they embodied ideas, fears, and abstractions about the human condition,
be it about death or disease, be it a social
concern or um, you know what, have you eased even ourselves?
(30:35):
How we can be unknowable to ourselves? Exactly? Yes, certainly
when you look at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde King.
Also in this uh, this intro, he he describes hard
to as a kind of replacement therapy you know where.
And this gets a little into Catharsis, but but more
along the lines of I have certain things in my
(30:55):
life that, um, that caused me a certain the level
of anxiety, and um, wouldn't it be nice if I
could replace that for a little bit with some imagined
anxiety that's even worse, so an escapism that makes my
lot in life look not so bad? Yeah, he says.
The horror story writer is not so different from the
Welsh sin eater who was supposed to take upon himself
(31:16):
the sins of the deer departed by partaking of the
deer departed's food. The tale of Monstrosity and tearor is
a basket loosely packed with phobious When the writer passes by,
you take one of his imaginary horrors out of the
basket and you put one of your real ones in
at least for a time, which I thought it was
an interesting way of looking at it. Well, very cool. Um,
(31:38):
I think that these are different ways to kind of
come at the subject. But at the end of the day, Um,
you know, there's there's something that a psychologist named Glenn
Waltz's of Cuttown University. What he said I thought was
was resonated with me. He said, control lost under the
cover of darkness is rediscovered in the light of day.
Danger posed by things unknown is reduced by increased knowledge
(32:01):
and predict predictability. And I thought that is really what
it's about. I mean, any sort of story is a
bit of a training wheels for us to try to
occupy this this space in our mind. We try to
imagine ourselves in these horrific moments. Um, So it is instructive. Yeah,
in that context, I'll be sure to do a blog
post to go along with this podcast, and so as
(32:24):
to cut down in time now, I will list some
other favorite bits of horrorsh fiction or horror uh film
um in that blog post you can check it out.
So as gonna leave this podcast and our contemplation of
fearful and horrible things and and how real and imagine, yeah,
real and imagine, and how looking into the darkness can
(32:45):
help us conquer the darkness. Here's a little bit of
geeky uh quotiness from one of my favorite authors, Frank Herbert. Uh,
you'll recognize it. He said, Uh, I must not fear.
Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death.
It brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I
will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the
(33:07):
inner eye to see its path. Where fear has gone,
there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Hallelujah. Yeah,
So who's for that in your mind? Next time you
watch something frightening on TV that isn't the news. If
it leads, it leads. All right, do we have an
email there? Yes, there's Well, I feel like we've probably
(33:29):
went a little along, so I'm just gonna have the
robot share one of these with us, all right. This
is from one Albert Albert Wright cent and says Hi,
Robert and Julie. I finished listening to the centaur episode.
Very interesting. Just wanted to pass on something regarding centaur sex.
John Varley UH in his science fiction novel Titan, explored
(33:49):
this very topic. Astronauts end up exploring a space station
and one of the species they meet our centaurs. These
centaurs have both human genitalia and equine genitalia, and the
two parts do not necessarily match, meaning a centaur with
a male human package can have a female equine package.
The author explores a lot of interesting topics in sexuality
(34:12):
in this novel. I highly recommend it. Uh. That is awesome.
John Varley UM. For those of you who are not
familiar with him, he uh wrote a lot of science
fiction back in the day. He also wrote one particular
story called Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. UH. And there
was a kind of awesome, kind of cheesy PBS adaptation
(34:32):
of this story of starring Rawl Rawle Julia back in
the day, and it was actually featured on Mystery Science
Theater three thousand Adams Family role Julia. Yeah, Yeah, that's
that raw Julia. Great actor. UM. Kind of a very
cheesy production, A lot of kind of matrix C type
special effects before we really have the ability to pull
that off. Um, but if you could see the strings
(34:54):
on them as they bent backward. Yeah, but it is
cheesy as it is. There are some factless ideas explored
in that, and so it doesn't come it's too much
of a surprise that John Varley also explored the topic
of a cent to our sexuality. So there you go, um,
and Tina's placement and and other equipment. There you go.
So it sounds like one worth checking out there. Thanks
(35:15):
Albert for bringing that to attention. And uh, if any
of you would like to discuss the topic of centaur
sexuality or horror with us, you know where to find
us on both at the same there is a lot
of overlap between us two topics. I would I mentioned.
You can find us on Facebook where we are stuff
to Blow your Mind, and you can find us on
(35:36):
Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind. Let us
know your experiences with horror fiction, horror movies, what scares
you and what are your thoughts on the the freight
process inside your mind? And you can always drop us
a line at blew the Mind at discovery dot com.
(35:57):
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